For Alderaan!
by Fiddlefiend
Summary: A ragtag group of escapees from the Alderaani disaster in 0 ABY seek revenge for the destruction of their homeworld through the assassination of the formal Imperial ambassador. Rated M for violence and occasional but explicit sexuality.
1. Prologue

Aldera was without contest the most beautiful example of natural and technological harmony in known space. Small for a planetary capital, it housed approximately two hundred million civilians and tourists in immaculate apartments overlooking the Aldera University campus, the giant lake on whose perimeter the city held its foundations, or the immense canyon which materialized mere metres from the city limits, opening onto brisk, empty air which allowed the last failing rays of the setting sun to pass freely through the distant mountain range and caress the metropolitan skyline in a bath of red and golden light and dramatic, sweeping shadows. This evening was like any other in the Alderaani capital; a Bith jazz band could be heard from a dimly lit restaurant, along with the merry babble of subdued patrons in varying stages of sedate relaxation; the buzz of faraway spacecraft in the takeoff and landing lanes overhead had entered a slow decrescendo as the hubbub of the marketing thoroughfare in the merchant's square below came to a close; and many a contented couple leaned casually against the banister of the elevated balcony from which Naq Söthn surveyed the glorious panorama.

Naq set himself apart from the others on the terrace in that he was alone, alone in every sense of the word. He raised his right hand in front of his face and flexed it experimentally- something he had done quite often during his exile from the order he had failed so long ago. The faint clicking of his prosthetic carpals ground on his ears, and he cringed, lowering it back onto the railing and letting the wide, brown sleeve of his homespun robe fall over it, temporarily concealing from himself at least one unfortunate aspect of what he had become in the rise of the Galactic Empire. An isolated center of apathetic regret, he quarantined his soul from those around him, refusing to spoil their unreserved merriment with the ripples of his own melancholy through the Force. He refused likewise, however, to take any solace himself in the unguarded gladness and essential love which surrounded him here; he deserved none of it. He had let the Republic fall into the deepest darkness it had seen in all its twenty-five thousand years.

The old jedi merged the sleeves of his robe, turning on his heel. He turned his face away from the warm, dulcet rays of the fading sunset and strode back toward the restaurant. The lighting was ample here, and the faces around him were uniformly relaxed and cheerful, but both were too artificial, too _tried for_, to quell the foreboding which had built in the catacombs of Naq's sorrow-wizened mind. He felt no panic- he could clearly recall the last time he had felt panic, nineteen years ago in a hangar on Coruscant, when a young hero (what an ironic word "hero" was) had given him the worst news of his life. No, since then, he simply could not muster the energy for panic. Instead, he allowed the gradual, accepting sadness to envelope his consciousness without jolting his perfect, serene equilibrium in the sea of joyous lives which he could not touch. He was the only one in this room with the faintest inkling of what was even now being endorsed by high-ranking stylus and screen back on "Imperial Centre". He looked actively around him for the first time that evening, memorizing the faces of the people sitting nearest to him. Soon, far sooner than any one of them deserved, their paradise would be rocked by the most disastrous and merciless act ever committed in the galaxy's million years of recorded history.

Alderaan- not its people, nor its government, nor its long and rich historical culture, but Alderaan in its utter entirety- was nearing its end.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The empire had its propaganda; the rebellion had its spies; the Jedi had their quasi-mystical Force powers; Aaron Kraft had his tongue. He had never come across a situation he couldn't talk himself out of- or into. Now, sitting at the bar in a low-lit cantina just off of Aldera's merchant square, he put his silver-lined speech to work again- no fancy eloquence, no impressive vocabulary; just straightforward, plain-faced suggestion.

"So, you're here on vacation?" he probed, raising an artful eyebrow and letting his eyes skim the scant habiliments of the generously endowed twi'lek woman sitting next to him.

"I live in Aldera," she replied evenly, crossing her legs and fixing him with a voluptuous, blue-eyed stare. Her skin matched her irises exactly, lending the whole picture a unity that seemed to invite Aaron's gaze to wander, but he kept it resolutely centred on her face and forged onward.

"Really? Hereabouts?"

"A few levels up, on the other side of the square. I suppose you'll have one of those big tourist apartments way up in the towers, hmm?" she laughed lightly, her naturally throaty accent lending to her remarkable allure.

"No, I'm on the eleventh level. Nothing too fancy. I'm just here for the atmosphere and company. No high-end sightseeing cruises for me." He made a show of swishing his juma around in its glass, contemplating it in what he knew looked like a state of deep thought.

The twi'lek shook her head. "No, nor for me. I've only left the city twice, and the landscape is beautiful, but I hear the best view is from the towers."

"Really?" Aaron reeled in the conversation, finally allowing his eyes to waver from her face, if only for an instant. "I don't know about that." He focused on her eyes again, letting the suggestion hang suspended between the two of them, an inscrutable coincidence. She smiled differently now, shifting slightly to lean on the bar, her fingers tracing nonsensical patterns on the counter while her free hand toyed idly with her drink.

"Well, a lot better than your eleventh-level hostel could give you, anyway," she said at last, grinning mischievously as she took a sip from whatever greenish concoction she had bought, breaking their eye contact.

_Ouch._ This was a difficult woman. A moment later, though, the twi'lek twisted away from him to put her drink down behind her, momentarily splaying the fabric of her "shirt" over the taut lines of her shoulders and torso to great aesthetic effect before turning back to him with an unapologetic, flirtatious expression. The long necklace she wore hung carelessly in front of her as she leaned forward slightly, one arm still on the bar.

"Then again, why _don't _we go up to the towers?" she remarked playfully, taking Aaron a little aback. "We have as much right as anyone else."

"The right, of course, but where's our money?" Aaron chuckled, taking a healthy swig from his juma and putting it down on the bar, following example and leaning forward as well. "Credits buy those things."

"What things, exactly?"

"Well, everything, but especially luxuries. Tourism, entertainment, all the good vintages-"

"But why? What do those people have that gives them the right to all of that?" this was a serious question; she was testing him somehow, but he had lost the thread completely. Her voice never lost its playful timbre, however, so he played it by ear.

"They've got things someone else wants," he shrugged.

"Do credits buy everything we want?"

"No, of course not- just the extra things."

"The extra things?"

"The things we don't _need_. The treats. The things that improve your life, instead of just keeping you alive." Aaron could tell he was winning; the twi'lek woman was still smiling, and she spoke energetically, enjoying the discussion.

"So we need credits to improve our lives, hmm?" Aaron suddenly realized that he was close enough to catch the scent of her breath as she said this. He sat up instinctively in spite of himself. The woman stayed where she was, her body protracted toward him in the energy of their exchange, letting her question hang in the air. Her eyes were still on his, and he swallowed, unsure how to respond. He tried not to notice the intoxicating view her current position offered him of her full, smoothly pigmented breasts.

"Sometimes," he answered finally, deciding to drop the question and let her lead him on. Then, in a sudden, reviving surge of inspiration, "those of us without them find ways, though. Credits don't buy the atmosphere, or the company." He raised his glass, proud of the deep mantra he had composed. She sat up, looking satisfied, and followed suit. They drained the last of their drinks.

"Vemma Nun," the twi'lek extended a hand.

"Aaron Kraft," he took her hand, but his spurt of inspired zeal carried his movement, and rather than shaking her hand he found himself raising it to his lips, keeping his eyes on hers all the while. He felt like an idiot when he let go, but he would have to deal with it.

Vemma stood now, a winning smile playing her features. "Snap my fingers for me, would you?" she asked, jerking her head at the devaronian bartender, "I'll be back in a minute." She turned on her heel and walked away in the direction of the refreshers, glancing once over her shoulder at him before losing herself in the crowd in front of the stage, where a small, ambient percussion ensemble had gathered a respectable fan-base in the clientele.

Aaron ordered another drink each for Vemma and himself, trusting the devaronian to remember what precisely it was that the twi'lek had ordered last time. He swished the liquid around in his new juma glass, intent on waiting for Vemma's return before taking the draught. As he sat there, however, his thoughts were tugged away from his exciting new companion by another voice, drifting over from a table set up just behind him.

"We have to get off of this world."

In the months and years to come, Aaron would thank every mythological figure he had ever heard of for allowing him to hear this voice. He half-turned, not wanting the speaker to know he was eavesdropping. The little round table behind him, empty until very recently, was now occupied by a pair of hunched humanoids with hooded cloaks. This was not so unusual in itself, but Aaron knew immediately that this particular pair of hooded figures meant more than the rank-and-file; the nearer figure, now that he looked, had a distinctly simian head, with an elongated snout and pointed ears. Aaron turned back to the counter, fiddling innocently with his drink, hoping they hadn't noticed him.

Bothans. The spies and infiltrators of the Rebel Alliance. He strained his ears, eager to hear what was being discussed.

"They're removing the Ambassador in two days; the _Chrysalis _is already en route."

"How long?"

"A week, at most. Admiral Ackbar says sooner."

There was a pause. Aaron was completely still, frozen by the nebulous implications of the bothans' words. What would happen in a week, or sooner? What was the _Chrysalis_? And above all, why did the bothans _and_ "the Ambassador"- whoever that was- need to leave Alderaan before it happened? Everything else in the cantina became eerily quiet as Aaron concentrated to the limits of his suddenly sober faculties upon this foreboding dialogue.

"Can we withdraw our assets in that time?"

"Even if we could, we'd have to leave them. We can't risk causing a panic on Alderaan, or none of us will get out."

Another pause. Then-

"And how _are_ we going to get out?"

"The _Chrysalis_. That's the only ship that will be leaving this world when we need to. We don't have a choice, May'la."

The two fell silent. Aaron realized he had been holding his breath, and let it out slowly. As the bothans began to drink in silence, he pondered the conversation he had just overheard. Whatever the spies had learned, whatever was going to happen, it was obviously not a good idea to stay on Alderaan long. A week, they had said, before it happened- whatever "it" was. Most likely some kind of revolt- that would make sense, if a politician was scheduled for extraction in anticipation of the event. If that was the case, it was probably the Imperial Ambassador who was being removed; if any government was consistently disliked among the transient multitude of tourists, merchants and scholars which formed Aldera's ever-shifting populace, it was the Empire. It was even rumoured that Senator Bail Organa's mysteriously missing daughter, Leia, was among the high-ranking members of the Rebel Alliance.

Aaron had no love for the Galactic Empire, and probably nothing immediate to fear from a civilian riot against their oppressors, but traffic would stop, military intervention would be ordered and then he would have something to fear. There was no rush just now, but he resolved to leave Aldera within the next three days, so as to jump the line of the like-minded when the last-minute panic set in.

This was all conjecture, of course. It could be that there was no revolt-to-be, and that he was blowing an idle cantina discourse out of proportion.

"Oh, you waited! Thank you," came a much more welcome voice to his left. Aaron turned, his mood transforming instantly as Vemma reclaimed her stool at the bar.

"Of course," he grinned, all thought of leaving Alderaan suddenly and forcibly relegated to the darkest and most remote of his mind's forgotten backrooms. They toasted silently, and each took on about a third of their drink. The bothans were muttering to each other again, but Aaron dismissed this; he would leave Alderaan in time to avoid whatever their supposed cataclysm was, and be done with it. For now, he had other things on which to centre his concentration.

For instance, Vemma's next probing question.

"So, what, if not credits, gets us what we want?" she asked, re-adopting her casual leaning position against the bar with her drink in her free hand.

This one was easy. "Well, for starters, we have to want something, of course," he picked up his drink and swirled it again. He wasn't sure whether or not it helped him think, but it made him look as though he was thinking, at least. "Then, we have to find someone who has what we want."

"Yes?" the twi'lek took another sip, and then put down her drink.

Aaron nodded, steering his response. "Obviously. But then, here's the hard part: we have to have what they want, as well."

Vemma's eyes gleamed. "I see." In an instant, she tossed back her head, lekku whipping outward for an instant, and drained the last of her drink. Aaron hurriedly followed suit, not one to be outdone where drinking was concerned. The juma burned his throat, instantly reinvigorating his senses. The percussion ensemble was sharper in his ears, and the whisperings of the bothans at the next table momentarily rose into an audible mutter as well.

Standing up, Vemma laid a small handful of money on the counter and pushed in her stool, smiling at him.

"I think I'd better get going," she said, moving past him as he too left his seat.

"Me too, I suppose," he smirked, "back to my eleventh-level apartment." He put his money on the counter next to hers, adding a generous tip in his high humour.

The twi'lek laughed, turning toward the door. "Yes, well, I'm sure the atmosphere and company up in the towers are awful. You're not so unlucky."

Aaron hoped he wasn't. Catching up with her, he whispered into her ear.

"Are you coming?"

She smiled. "I think I may as well."

Of all the vacationers currently lodged in the luxurious hotel suites at the top of Aldera's celebrated Killik Spire, Vorwin Sludge was probably the only one not gazing, dreamy-eyed, out onto the uniquely spectacular tableau of natural beauty proffered by the edifice's privileged vantage point. The second tallest building in the city, exceeded only narrowly by the Aldera Royal Palace, Killik Spire's many tiers and balconies were said to be a world unto themselves, but Sludge was not interested in the view. His office in Galaxy City provided a far more impressive view of the technological accomplishment that was Coruscant, with its unending, kilometres-high forest of buildings both functional and aesthetic. He could understand the fascination of commonplace, nature-loving human tourists with Alderaan's unspoiled natural beauty, but he had bigger things to worry about.

Laying his datapad down on his desk for the first time in over three hours, the quarren executive rolled his shoulders to loosen his posture, laying his designer stylus across the screen and swivelling his chair to face the news hologram in the far corner of his richly-furnished workroom. The hologram was saying something about a threatened uprising in the city's west side, but Sludge hardly heard it. No matter how he had tried to divert himself over the past three weeks, he couldn't seem to tug his mind away from the realization that had kept him awake at night since his last meeting with the Imperial requisitioner on Kuat.

It was widely thought that quarrens, publically styled as starkly rational and ruthlessly businesslike, had no sense of right and wrong. Of many of his kind, Sludge new this to be true. However, when the headstrong executive officer had found out what his personal investment might have cost the galaxy in freedom, happiness and probably in blood, any doubt as to his retention of a moral conscience had been bleakly swept from his reeling mind.

Kuat Drive Yards, the largest and most renowned shipbuilders in the galaxy, had never refused a contract with the Imperials before; they brought almost all of the company's business, they paid fully and reliably, and anyway it was important to keep a galactic dictatorship happy no matter what one thought of it. When their last requisition had come, however, this time complete with the ready-made blueprints churned out by the Empire's own ambitious engineers and architects, there had been no possible answer that was not "no". Not having been present, Sludge, one of the major funding forces in the corporation, had seen an opportunity. A project too large for even Kuat Drive Yards to take on in its entirety! The quarren had jumped onto the long list of sponsors without hesitation, counting on the connections he would make within the Empire itself to pay off his investment many times over.

He had been right about all of that. At the reported completion of the eighteen-year construction project, Sludge had been given a vacation, courtesy of the Emperor with all expenses paid, to beautiful Alderaan. He was well-liked among the hierarchy of financial contributors and benefactors who had helped the Empire demonstrate its superiority to the shipyard which had turned the project down. Sludge's own contribution had been monumental, and had sped construction by perhaps a year. Everything was fine until he accidentally discovered exactly what it was that he had helped to create.

Sludge had known all along what the station _looked_ like, how many crew and civilians it would hold, how the space was divided between functionality and diversion, and so on. The massive construct had been designed in accordance with the Tarkin Doctrine, emphasizing size as much as firepower, to create a symbol of fear in the Imperial navy. The average potential rebel had no head for tactics, calculation or firepower; they would simply look at their tiny, one-man fighter craft, look at this station, and dismiss the notion of combat as an anticlimactic martyrdom. The navy could win without a fight, saving countless lives. It was a splendid plan.

As it turned out, that was not the plan. The project he had so naively agreed to support with his vast reserve of credits was not simply a gigantic battle station covered in heavy ship-to-ship weaponry its noble officers hoped never to be forced to use. It was a pointed and singular weapon, a terrifying new force in the galaxy. This station was capable, with the nonchalant flick of a switch, of destroying an entire planet. If he had only inquired further when he had agreed to the "Prevention Project", he would perhaps have known enough to disengage himself from it as his superiors at KDY had, knowing its real nature by way of its real and telling name.

The Death Star.

He had protested the project, of course, but no one spent that much time and money on anything with a view to repent on the words of a single malcontent. Sludge had been mislead, but when he expressed his resentment and misgivings to his new superiors on Coruscant, he was casually waved away. They had done it. A planet-decimating superweapon. There was no going back now. Sludge had been tossed a year-long Alderaani retreat for his trouble, and they had sent him on his way. Out from under their feet on Imperial Centre, he could not spread contention against what was to be a secret project, and in the paradise that was Alderaan, it was a known fact that doomsayers could only be laughed at. Sludge was thanked for his support, and that was the end of his last visit to the Imperial Palace.

Now, no longer affiliated with KDY, which had demanded a resignation for his under-the-table dealings outside of their accepted market, and essentially laid off by the Empire, who never wanted to hear from him again unless it was to endorse the Death Star and propose the construction of a second, Sludge had nothing to do but wait and see how the galaxy fared in the indiscriminate sights of his terrifying creation, knowing its completion could have been delayed another year or more without his direct contribution to it.

Turning back to his desk, Sludge re-read the message on his datapad one last time before taking up the stylus and signing the blank field at its base. Tapping the "send" key, he imagined his resignation letter travelling from the handheld device to the network receiver at the top of Killik Spire, and from there to the communications satellite in geostationary orbit over Aldera, and then through the myriad holonet transponders between Alderaan and Kuat, where it would be redirected to the secretary of Kuat himself, whose family name had held such enormous influence at the founding of the company as to actually rechristen the whole planet under its corporate banner. The secretary would read the subject heading, smirk at the irony of the letter which could not but be called a superfluous formality, and forward it to the Chief Executive Officer's personal orbital module. There, Kuat of Kuat would read Sludge's message, and it would all be over; in his world, there was no threat from the Death Star. The Empire would never destroy its most productive military shipyard, no matter what hard feelings might exist between them over the rejected contract. In Kuat's reality, the project had simply been too big, requiring the allocation of too many inexpendable resources and the commitment of too many high-salary workers for too long an interval. For the rest of the galaxy, it was the greatest horror ever unleashed upon life as a whole. But then, Sludge couldn't criticise his former employer for not caring about the impact that the Death Star would have on neutral or resistance worlds; he himself, after all, had been instrumental in its creation.

For an instant, he felt an impulse to throw the datapad out of the open patio across the room from his desk, and to let it fly over the edge of the balcony and into the street eight hundred metres below. This was an irrational impulse, born of simple frustration and anger, but he toyed with the idea nonetheless. On the one hand, perhaps his instinctive desire to destroy the little machine held some pleasant metaphorical association with the destruction of the Death Star itself. On the other, though, destruction was not the sort of impulse he wanted to indulge- no matter what the target- in the expanding shadow of a rapidly approaching era dominated by the threat of an apocalyptic superweapon.

Standing up and leaving the datapad where it was, Sludge strode heavily out onto his balcony after all. The sunset was vivid and dramatic this evening, and the huge volume of empty air onto which the city's eastern limit opened leant the section of the city visible from Sludge's side of the spire a feeling not unlike an island in the sky. The quarren peered around at the breathtaking natural sanctuary that was Alderaan and shook his head, wishing he could enjoy it. The fact was that now, thanks to him, Alderaan, just like any other planet in the galaxy, could disappear without warning at any time. The last sensory perceptions of the people living on that battle station's first target world would be a blinding flash of light, a crash of invasive sound and a wash of unimaginable heat.

Sludge turned away from the scenery and re-entered his study. There was only one thing left to do. Simple logic and mathematics told him that no one stood a chance of stopping that monstrosity now, but someone had to try. Someone with the means to confront the Empire. He walked back to his desk, sat down, and picked up the datapad again. Encrypting the message for anonymity in case it was intercepted, he keyed in a contact he had not spoken to for years. If he was still alive, the one to receive this message would do his utmost to relay this information to the one faction with the power to stage an attack on the Death Star.

Sludge was sacrificing everything for this gambit, he knew; there was already a strong possibility that the Empire would lose its thin tolerance for him after his protestations on Coruscant. Nevertheless, he had to do what little he could to give the Rebel Alliance a chance at survival. The Death Star's schematics. It was not for him to steal them, or to see them to the Alliance himself. Indeed, he wouldn't even know where to start looking for the rebels. Hopefully, though, his one age-old connection within the organization was still good. He would probably never know. Picking up his stylus again, he steadied his hand and wrote one word: _Danuta_. Then, almost afraid to keep the message glowing in front of him for another instant in case it shouted itself to the incriminating heavens and brought the Empire bearing down on him, the traitor, he hurriedly jabbed the "send" key once more. The word disappeared from the screen.

He emptied the message outbox, and then wiped the deletion records. Then, in a panicked frenzy, unable to believe what he'd done, Vorwin Sludge threw the datapad on the floor and stomped on it again and again and again, destructive metaphor be damned, before gingerly picking up the shattered minicomputer's remains and dumping them down the refuse shaft under his desk, wringing his hands as though to rid them of some telltale residue of treasonous espionage. Then he sat down.

Well, he'd done it. There was no taking anything back now. What would come would come. He looked back toward the patio and stood up again, walking outside into the fresh air once more, slowly. All of a sudden, beautiful Alderaan was a great deal more appreciable.

A shadow passed over Zohah's good mood as he re-ran the Bothans' conversation in his head. Something, something inevitable and heavily consequential, was going to happen on Alderaan very soon. He had lived on the paradise planet for almost twelve years, but if this event was enough to, as they put it, "cause a panic on Alderaan", then his time on this world was done.

That much was simple logic, and for a two-metre-tall wookie, he was fairly good with logic. The complication was his temporary roommate, the gungan Ningming Vox, hiccoughing obliviously across the table from him. The trouble with Ningming, he reflected, aside from alcoholism, was her chronic and insuppressible cheerfulness. You could tell her she was going to die within the next ten minutes, and she would fix you with a blank, slightly cross-eyed stare, seem to register something negative in the universe for an infinitesimal fraction of a second and then quickly forget what you said, buy you a drink, buy herself two and sing one of her atonal rhapsodies about the gungan hero Binks on Naboo at the deposition of the Federate Occupation until she eventually fell asleep in her plate. Getting off of Alderaan was going to be far more difficult if he wanted to bring her with him, and as she was staying in his apartment in Aldera, she was his responsibility. Of all of the times to realize she had a friend on the paradise planet and decide to leave Coruscant on vacation from- of all things- freelance home environmental mycology, this was the most absurdly inconvenient week Ningming could have chosen, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

Zohah took up his last forkful of nerf steak and washed it down with a final gulp of cheep Coruscanti beer. His standards were not high, and his cultural tastes were pragmatic to a point that some had called cynical, but he got by. Zohah's mind was organized and methodical, designed for survival and not for recreation. It was not that he never found occasion to enjoy himself, of course; he simply placed a higher priority on getting through the day.

Which was precisely why he and Ningming were going to have to leave. Zohah raised his head, intending to take another stab at the gungan's impenetrable optimism and inject her with the imminent prospect of evacuation. Whenever she did finally accept a warning of darker things to come, of course, she had an unfortunate tendency to panic beyond warranted concern, and so the task was not one he had looked forward to. Still, it had to be done.

It could not be done. Ningming was no longer sitting across the table from Zohah. She had approached the stage in the centre of the cantina, weaving somewhat but keeping afoot with the support of nearby tables and chairs. The slightly smoky atmospheric condition of the room leant her a kind of spectral pallor that would have been easy to laugh at if Zohah were a little less frustrated with his companion.

"Excqueeze meh," she pardoned herself somewhat haphazardly as a waiter was overturned with the sound of breaking glass. She was headed straight for the percussion ensemble.

Panicking himself with the realization of what his impaired roommate was about to attempt, Zohah launched himself from his seat with a loud, gurgling cry. He reached her in seconds, hooked his arm around her waist from behind ("peirdan meh, mesa sor- eirgh!!"), and pulled her bodily from the stage.

"Mesa wann' maka parfeermance!" Ningming protested as Zohah dragged her back to their table, using his free hand to right a chair she had knocked over and make an apologetic gesture to its occupant. He growled to the effect that she should leave the professionals to their work. He could imagine only too easily the scene of carnage his gungan friend would create if she were given the impression that she was performing on-stage with an obscure set of instruments whose operation consisted solely of thwacking and banging things together. He sat her down and tried to explain their new situation yet again.

Perhaps the reason he continued to have so much difficulty getting the message across to Ningming had to do with their linguistic differences. Generally, the two could communicate well enough to decide jointly where to go and what to do when occasion arose to make such a call. However, for more specific conveyances on the order of "something terrible is going to happen within the next week and we must leave this planet to avoid it", simple enough when the communicatory wavelengths are compatible, seemed to defy Zohah and Ningming completely. The gungan dialect of basic, a grossly simplified and frustratingly approximate derivative of that spoken by the Naboo, made any interaction difficult enough as it was, but the wookie language was even worse. Truth be told, there was no wookie "language", _per se_. Shyriiwook was more a convention of basic mood and idea. Wookie physiology made diverse and specific vowels and consonants favoured by other languages extremely difficult to pronounce. Thus, an easier system of sounds was devised with few conventions of grammar or definition, involving much gesticulation and facial expression to make up for its phonographic simplicity. A gungan, let alone a drunk one, had little chance of comprehending any message more complicated than a pointed finger.

"Was yousa sayin'?"

"Aaoouuargh!!!"

"You hungie? Yousa looken hungie, all pointsen teet' 'n' souch…"

"Boooaauuggh!!!"

"Mesa cals waiter ver yousa?"

"Mugh…?"

"Ohauh! Seeahn da perty twiluk! Shissen goin' wit' dat pilot-mann!"

Predictably, this exchange did no good whatsoever for Zohah's goal, so he decided it was time to call it a night. He was gifted among his species in that he could compose written messages, albeit slowly. Ningming was not a strong reader, but perhaps he could make himself clear tomorrow morning when the gungan's brain was only customarily addled.

The most important thing to think about just now was transportation. Keeping an eye on Ningming in case she wandered off again in search of fame and fortune, the wookie thought for a minute. Neither he nor Ningming possessed a spacecraft of their own, and the transport Ningming had taken would not return on its next round for nearly a standard month. Clearly, then, they would have to seek passage aboard a commercially or privately owned cruiser or cargo vessel. Or even this _Chrysalis_ of which the bothans had spoken, if all else failed. Inferably, it was a ship of Imperial employ, as it was supposed to be picking up "the Ambassador". This, of course, could only refer to Ambassador Bastien Solo of Imperial Centre. He was not well-liked among the Alderaani, and certainly it would make sense to make his extraction a priority if a crisis was looming; he would be the first target of the masses.

Breaking out of his reverie just in time to swat Ningming's hand out of the air before she could order another drink, Zohah slapped his money on the table and strode toward the door. The gungan followed reluctantly. They would return to Zohah's workshop loft and he would try again in the morning to clarify their new circumstances to Ningming. In the meantime, they left the smoky cantina and entered the brisk, slightly cooler outdoor air of the sunbathed evening, directing their steps to the west of the city and Zohah's home.

How many were on Alderaan? May'la couldn't say exactly, but the figure was definitely over two billion. She looked across the table at Frescuss, wondering how he could possibly be so calm, so unruffled. He leaned over his cider and breathed its scent, not drinking anything yet, his ears twitching irritably under his hood. They always did that, as though some parasitic insect inhabited his scalp. He looked completely unbothered and businesslike, contemplating his steaming beverage and clicking his fingers idly on the tabletop, breathing slowly and evenly.

But then, she probably looked about the same herself, May'la realized, taking a sip of her own cider and studying her husband. No expression could be given to the impending disaster, outside of bland dejection, so long as they were among the Alderaani citizenry. The best they could do was to escape, to save themselves and the asset they were to the Rebel Alliance, in the hopes that their continued efforts against the Empire might eventual extract retribution for the uncounted deaths which were now inevitable.

The Emperor was not invincible. Not yet. He had not subjugated the galaxy; the Rebellion itself was evidence of that. He had not wiped out the Jedi; at least two remained on Tatooine and, as Frescuss and May'la had discovered, on Alderaan, and nothing was known for certain about Grand Master Yoda's fate in the wake of Order sixty-six. Finally, he had not created the ultimate force in the galaxy; this station could and would be destroyed. To this goal the entire Rebel Alliance would devote itself without rest. The question was, how long would it take? How many unarmed worlds would be disintegrated in the interim while the Rebellion devised a means of sabotage?

Well, one would, at least. Alderaan's fate had been sealed at least a day ago. Now it was all a matter of politics, of command chains, which would determine the exact date of all those deaths.

"A week?" May'la breathed again, grappling with the magnitude of this truth.

"At most," Frescuss repeated, his voice devoid of its usual sharpness, "perhaps sooner. Regardless, we have to leave when Ambassador Solo does, or sooner. There's nothing we can do for anyone else, May'la. We have to accept that."

"I know. I'm not thinking about that anymore. How many are aboard that station?"

"Our sources have guessed about thirty-two million, but realistically? A sphere with a diameter in the hundreds of kilometres, several inhabitable floors… It must be at least three times Alderaan's population."

"Good. I'll keep that in mind when Ackbar blows it to hell."

Frescuss looked up at her now, an odd expression on his face. "So will I," he said after a moment, "and it will make it worse. There is no winning here, May'la. Most of those people probably don't even know what's going on in the command chamber, the bridge or the armoury. Such a large station… Will we take such pleasure in the deaths of the support staff? The secretaries? The caretakers? No. The Alliance will destroy that station because we need to, but the vast majority of the deaths we cause in return for those killed here on Alderaan will be just as innocent as the people sitting in this cantina.

May'la nodded, her pulse slowing. Frescuss was nine years older than her- a small span, really, but nevertheless she sometimes felt childish in an exchange like this. They were equals, intellectually and politically, but her husband's significant advantage in life experience often made May'la resent her own impulsiveness.

"Shouldn't we at least try to save the Jedi?" she asked, sipping from her cider again. Technically, she and Frescuss shared the role of decision-making equally between them, but this was one of those times when she felt that deferring to his council would provide some much-needed relief from the almost palpable tension that surrounded them. To her, with the knowledge of what was going to happen so soon, the planet itself seemed somehow to be squaring its shoulders, mentally preparing itself for its demise, holding its breath. Perhaps even hoping it wouldn't hurt too much.

Frescuss gave a grunt of humourless laughter. "If we can find him, but you know what that means."

May'la nodded again, ears drooping slightly. Their friend, Master Söthn, would be among the unidentifiable dead in a week. At this realization, the whole situation seemed to dull. No new anguish, no painful renewal of anger or hatred against the Imperial administration; simply an aging wound which had receded to the point of a blunt throb. The old Jedi's death was a concept so alien, so incomprehensible, even next to the destruction of a planet, that May'la's mind finally rejected the entire reality in favour of a deep quasi-scrying of her cider. Naq Söthn, surely, would endure the attack. If he could be killed, the entire Rebellion could clearly be destroyed without effort, and that was not an acceptable idea.


End file.
